Discover Shanghai
Sinan Mansions
思南公馆
A restored block of 51 garden villas from the 1920s French Concession, now a quiet open-air precinct of bookshops, cafes and small museums. It is the easiest place in Shanghai to see what the concession's villa streets actually looked like, without a ticket or a tour group.
The story
What makes this place special
Sinan Mansions is a block of garden villas on Sinan Road, in the former French Concession beside what was the French Park, now Fuxing Park. The protected buildings in the area number around 49, of which 39 have been designated outstanding historic buildings by the city, and they cover eight distinct residential types - detached garden houses, terraces, semi-detached garden houses, new-style lilong, garden lilong, modern apartment blocks, veranda houses and courtyard villas - which is why it is sometimes called a museum of Shanghai housing. The site had become badly overcrowded and subdivided by the late twentieth century; a conservation project begun in late 1999 took around a decade of negotiated resident relocation, and the city stipulated that the block could never be sold into private ownership and must stay open to the public.
What you’ll discover
Two parallel rows of brick-and-stucco villas on a quiet tree-lined street, now holding restaurants, a boutique hotel, bars and a few small exhibition spaces, with lawns and courtyards between them. Several individual houses were the homes of notable figures and carry plaques. You walk the lanes, look at the facades, and sit outside. It is a half-hour walk and a two-hour lunch.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- Read the plaques. The eight different housing types are the actual interest, and once you can tell a new-style lilong from a veranda house you can read the whole of the former concession.
- It is expensive to eat here and the restaurants are aimed at expense accounts. The cheaper and better food is on the surrounding streets, especially around Shaanxi South Road.
- This is one stop on a plane-tree walk, not an afternoon. String it with Fuxing Park, Sinan Road's southern end and Tianzifang or Wukang Road.
- It was explicitly kept in public ownership and must remain open, so you are entitled to walk through the whole block, including the courtyards, without buying anything.
- Weekday mornings are empty and the architecture is easiest to look at then. Evenings are a bar scene.
When to come
Weekday morning or late afternoon, spring and autumn, when the plane trees are the point. Winter strips the street of what makes it attractive.
Getting around
Good. The lanes are flat, paved and traffic-calmed and a wheelchair can move through the whole block. Individual villas have entrance steps, so interiors - restaurants and shops - vary, and the older houses have no lifts. For a bad knee it is one of the easiest walks in central Shanghai, with plenty of outdoor seating.
Worth knowing before you go
Combine it with Fuxing Park across the road, where locals do tai chi and ballroom dancing in the morning - the contrast with the villa block is the point. Sinan Bookstore keeps late hours and has English-language stock.
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